It seems that open source maven, Matt Asay along with well-known
Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley have come to the conclusion that
Microsoft doesn’t need open source. Asay contends that
Microsoft’s open source activity has more to do with regulators
than best practices and user collaboration.

Microsoft’s open-source charade is not about customers. It’s about regulators. Until Microsoft can
convince U.S. and European regulators that its market power is
not as bad as it once was, the company will need to hide behind
expressions of openness.

This week’s Open Source Business Conference was a strange
meeting of Enterprise IT users, venture capitalists, and free
software entrepreneurs. The opening keynote was delivered by Red
Hat’s freshly minted CEO Jim
Whitehurst who gave a very modest speech noting that while
Red Hat has been a leading open source company they have not
necessarily been an open source leader. Whitehurst’s presentation
lacked anything especially insightful or noteworthy and he has
the advantage of being the new guy so he’s off the hook for
anything that might have happened before he took the job.

What is apparent Red Hat’s no longer exciting. They’ve crossed
over to …

Content reproduced on this site is the property of the respective copyright holders.
It is not reviewed in advance by Oracle and does not necessarily represent the opinion
of Oracle or any other party.